Going Through Samaria

143:3.1About this time a state of great ner­vous and emo­tional ten­sion de­vel­oped among the apos­tles and their im­me­di­ate dis­ci­ple as­so­ciates. They had hardly be­come ac­cus­tomed to liv­ing and work­ing to­gether. They were ex­pe­ri­enc­ing in­creas­ing dif­fi­cul­ties in main­tain­ing har­mo­nious re­la­tions with John’s dis­ci­ples. The con­tact with the gen­tiles and the Samar­i­tans was a great trial to these Jews. And be­sides all this, the re­cent ut­ter­ances of Je­sus had aug­mented their dis­turbed state of mind. An­drew was al­most be­side him­self; he did not know what next to do, and so he went to the Mas­ter with his prob­lems and per­plex­i­ties. When Je­sus had lis­tened to the apos­tolic chief re­late his trou­bles, he said: “An­drew, you can­not talk men out of their per­plex­i­ties when they reach such a stage of in­volve­ment, and when so many per­sons with strong feel­ings are con­cerned. I can­not do what you ask of me—I will not par­tic­i­pate in these per­sonal so­cial dif­fi­cul­ties—but I will join you in the en­joy­ment of a three-day pe­riod of rest and re­lax­ation. Go to your breth­ren and an­nounce that all of you are to go with me up on Mount Sartaba, where I de­sire to rest for a day or two.

143:3.2“Now you should go to each of your eleven breth­ren and talk with him pri­vately, say­ing: ‘The Mas­ter de­sires that we go apart with him for a sea­son to rest and re­lax. Since we all have re­cently ex­pe­ri­enced much vex­a­tion of spirit and stress of mind, I sug­gest that no men­tion be made of our tri­als and trou­bles while on this hol­i­day. Can I de­pend upon you to co-op­er­ate with me in this mat­ter?’ In this way pri­vately and per­son­ally ap­proach each of your breth­ren.” And An­drew did as the Mas­ter had in­structed him.

143:3.3This was a mar­velous oc­ca­sion in the ex­pe­ri­ence of each of them; they never for­got the day go­ing up the moun­tain. Through­out the en­tire trip hardly a word was said about their trou­bles. Upon reach­ing the top of the moun­tain, Je­sus seated them about him while he said: “My breth­ren, you must all learn the value of rest and the ef­fi­cacy of re­lax­ation. You must re­al­ize that the best method of solv­ing some en­tan­gled prob­lems is to for­sake them for a time. Then when you go back fresh from your rest or wor­ship, you are able to at­tack your trou­bles with a clearer head and a stead­ier hand, not to men­tion a more res­o­lute heart. Again, many times your prob­lem is found to have shrunk in size and pro­por­tions while you have been rest­ing your mind and body.”

143:3.4The next day Je­sus as­signed to each of the twelve a topic for dis­cus­sion. The whole day was de­voted to rem­i­nis­cences and to talk­ing over mat­ters not re­lated to their re­li­gious work. They were mo­men­tar­ily shocked when Je­sus even ne­glected to give thanks—ver­bally—when he broke bread for their noon­tide lunch. This was the first time they had ever ob­served him to ne­glect such for­mal­i­ties.

143:3.5When they went up the moun­tain, An­drew’s head was full of prob­lems. John was in­or­di­nately per­plexed in his heart. James was griev­ously trou­bled in his soul. Mat­thew was hard pressed for funds inas­much as they had been so­journ­ing among the gen­tiles. Pe­ter was over­wrought and had re­cently been more tem­per­a­men­tal than usual. Ju­das was suf­fer­ing from a pe­ri­odic at­tack of sen­si­tive­ness and self­ish­ness. Si­mon was un­usu­ally up­set in his ef­forts to rec­on­cile his pa­tri­o­tism with the love of the broth­er­hood of man. Philip was more and more non­plused by the way things were go­ing. Na­than­iel had been less hu­mor­ous since they had come in con­tact with the gen­tile pop­u­la­tions, and Thomas was in the midst of a se­vere sea­son of de­pres­sion. Only the twins were nor­mal and un­per­turbed. All of them were ex­ceed­ingly per­plexed about how to get along peace­ably with John’s dis­ci­ples.

143:3.6The third day when they started down the moun­tain and back to their camp, a great change had come over them. They had made the im­por­tant dis­cov­ery that many hu­man per­plex­i­ties are in re­al­ity nonex­is­tent, that many press­ing trou­bles are the cre­ations of ex­ag­ger­ated fear and the off­spring of aug­mented ap­pre­hen­sion. They had learned that all such per­plex­i­ties are best han­dled by be­ing for­saken; by go­ing off they had left such prob­lems to solve them­selves.

143:3.7Their re­turn from this hol­i­day marked the be­gin­ning of a pe­riod of greatly im­proved re­la­tions with the fol­low­ers of John. Many of the twelve re­ally gave way to mirth when they noted the changed state of ev­ery­body’s mind and ob­served the free­dom from ner­vous ir­ri­tabil­ity which had come to them as a re­sult of their three days’ va­ca­tion from the rou­tine du­ties of life. There is al­ways dan­ger that mo­not­ony of hu­man con­tact will greatly mul­ti­ply per­plex­i­ties and mag­nify dif­fi­cul­ties.

143:3.8Not many of the gen­tiles in the two Greek cities of Archelais and Phasaelis be­lieved in the gospel, but the twelve apos­tles gained a valu­able ex­pe­ri­ence in this their first ex­ten­sive work with ex­clu­sively gen­tile pop­u­la­tions. On a Mon­day morn­ing, about the mid­dle of the month, Je­sus said to An­drew: “We go into Samaria.” And they set out at once for the city of Sy­char, near Ja­cob’s well.